STOP EU RAIL PRIVATISATION!

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: october 2013 :: RMTnews 7 T ransport unions backed the European Transport Workers day of action against EU rail privatisation earlier this month with protests outside European Commission Offices in London, Cardiff and Edinburgh. The European Union’s ‘Fourth Rail Package’ aims to enforce the privatisation of rail services across the continent, including the compulsory competitive tendering of rail passenger services and separation of infrastructure and operations. RMT general secretary Bob Crow said that the latest in a long line of EU rail diktats was designed to create a ‘Single European Rail Market’ which would entrench privatisation in Britain and across Europe. “It would mean that the currently publicly owned East Coast will have to be put out to tender and unleash a widespread attack on the jobs and conditions of rail workers and social dumping which will spark a race to the bottom of rail workers conditions. “This disastrous EU business model of privatisation is being applied to all our industries from postal services to health care, turning them into cash machines for the big global corporations which are only interested in profit,” he said. A European Transport Workers Federation statement said that competition would ramp up pressure to cut costs leading to job cuts, outsourcing and sub-contracting of services and increase the use of agency workers. “Liberalisation and fragmentation do not bring any good to the railways and we have to stop it now,” it said. STOP EU RAIL PRIVATISATION! NO2EU: Transport unions backing the European Transport Workers day of action against EU rail privatisation protesting outside European Commission Office in London and Edinburgh this month. Visit rmtv.org.uk for a full video